Praxial Music Education: Reflections and Dialogues

Praxial Music Education: Reflections and Dialogues

Praxial Music Education: Reflections and Dialogues

Synopsis

Praxial Music Education is both a critical companion to Music Matters, and an independent text on contemporary issues in music education. Among the themes discussed are multicultural music education, the nature of musical understanding, early childhood music education, the nature and teaching of music listening, music curriculum development, and musical creativity.

Excerpt

David J. Elliott

There are no ultimate sources of knowledge… Every source, every suggestion, is open to critical examination.

—Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (1965)

This book is a collection of critically reflective essays on the praxial concept of music and music education I put forth in Music Matters: a New Philosophy of Music Education (1995).

The idea for this project came to me while reading a series of books called Philosophers and Their Critics (Blackwell). Each book in this series presents several probing essays by different philosophers on the ideas of one contemporary philosopher. (Among the philosophers whose ideas undergo this kind of inquiry are Peter Singer, Willard Van Orman Quine, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, and Jerry Fodor.) Then, following these critiques, the philosopher whose work is under scrutiny offers replies to and engages in dialogues with his or her critics. the aim of this series is to highlight the reality and importance of scholarship as a collective, collaborative, and community enterprise that depends on dialogue to refine ideas “in the crucible of close scrutiny” (Lepore, in Dahlbom 1993, ii).

In my view, music education is in need of such books. Most fields have long traditions and sources of critical discourse. Students involved in (say) philosophy, literary theory, psychology, law, and gender studies encounter a wide range of alternative views during their education. They tend to be familiar with the characteristics and techniques of reasoned debate and the hallmarks of fallacious argument. Thus, as professionals, they expect to read and hear rigorous, ongoing, point-counterpoint dialogues about key concepts in their domains.